For much of the summer, roof repairs shrouded City Hall in a shimmery coat of white linen-like construction netting, barely visible as breezes rippled the sheets. Over the last two centuries, change has often been in the wind for City Hall and its surrounding park, as mayors, agencies, visionaries, grafters and others put forth ideas for an appropriate civic center — including getting rid of City Hall entirely.

The building attracted naysayers almost from Day 1. In 1805, a couple of years after work on City Hall began, The New York Gazette published a letter from “A Householder” calling it “a bottomless pit,” a sentiment echoed in 1826 in The New York Evening Post, which disdained it as “a magnificent palace” that should be “put in a state of preservation and suspended.”

The City Council began using the building in 1811, and an 1818 review in The Port Folio was no doubt more to its liking: “The brilliant whiteness of the facade, in contrast with the placid verdure of the lawn, in front, produces a luminous and aerial effect that fascinates every spectator.”

City Hall Park, indeed all city property, also fascinated Tammany Hall, which built the Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street, completed in 1872, at a moderate price for construction and a huge tab for graft.

Tammany eyes swung back to City Hall Park in the 1880s, especially after Hugh J. Grant became mayor in 1889. Although a swallowtail Democrat, meaning a Democrat untouched by machine politics, he was persuaded of the wisdom of Tammany, and the idea of a single large municipal building, encompassing all departments, in City Hall Park became a favored cause.

Unfortunately, City Hall would be smack dab in the middle of such a grand project. So it was particularly helpful to the Tammany cause when an independent Democrat, E. Ellery Anderson, testified in a council hearing that City Hall was just “an old building” that “occupies too much room” in the park. The members were meeting to discuss a new municipal complex 300 by 400 feet in size.

Of 13 architects interviewed in 1889 by The Real Estate Record and Guide, most thought City Hall could be demolished or relocated “somewhere,” a designation that ultimately included Bryant Park, Central Park, Pelham Bay Park and next to the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West.

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City Hall is covered in construction netting as work proceeds on the roof. The Tweed Courthouse is directly behind.CreditRobert Stolarik for The New York Times

The New York Tribune was bitterly opposed to demolition, and in 1891 accused Tammany of planning a giant municipal project for the sake of plunder. But The New York Times felt it was taking the forward view in promoting, in 1893, “a new City Hall, worthy of the metropolis, upon the site of the old one” that would “be a source of pride to the people for many years to come.”

A competition resulted in first place for Charles B. Atwood, whose design showed City Hall engulfed by new wings, a rear extension to the Tweed Courthouse, and a central tower, 20 stories tall, for records storage. Around the same time, the Tilden Trust was looking for a site for the library of the late Gov. Samuel J. Tilden. The trust’s president, John Bigelow, helpfully suggested that “much as we should regret the necessity of disturbing a structure consecrated to us,” it would accept old City Hall and move it to the top of a ziggurat in Bryant Park.

The Times repeated its assertion that old City Hall should be demolished or given to the New-York Historical Society, as if it were a toaster that could be boxed up and delivered by bicycle messenger. A new Tammany Democrat, Thomas Gilroy, who served as mayor in 1893 and 1894, also jumped in, saying he had seen a project calling for relocating City Hall to the top of a municipal building.

The New York Tribune obstreperously maintained “it belongs where it is and ought to be left there,” and in 1894 the State of New York passed a law prohibiting the demolition of City Hall. With that, serious attempts to tear it down were at an end — too much trouble for the possible gain.

Hitherto, it had been gospel not to destroy the Tweed Courthouse because it had cost so much, but a new generation of designs flipped the paradigm, keeping City Hall but anticipating the removal of the courthouse. One 1903 plan foresaw a giant structure rising on Chambers, terminating in a great dome like that atop the United States Capitol.

There is something politicians love about dedicating a single structure or complex to government, and visionary proposals for a new municipal building and a civic center kept flowing — a 1,000-foot castle-like tower behind City Hall in 1929, for instance. But after World War II the whole civic center idea becameshopworn, especially as planners began rejecting grand plans.

By the 1960s the most elaborate civic center under review was a tall tower on Reade Street connected to City Hall by a plaza with a fountain across Chambers Street, in the best midcentury modern style. But whether motivated by graft or vision, the civic center concept gradually died away.

In its stead, we have an endearingly ragtag group of buildings surrounding City Hall Park, where the pristine City Hall will, with luck, endure for hundreds of years.

Email: streetscapes@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page RE9 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s True, You Can’t Fight City Hall. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe